Shop These Summer Essentials in our Memorial Day Sale

We’re kicking things off with a Memorial Day Sale on dozens of our top-rated pieces of kitchen equipment (and cookbooks!). It’s some of the very best appliances, gadgets, and gear that my team at ATK Reviews has tested—and all of it comes strongly recommended by our expert product testers. Here are some of my favorite pieces of gear that will help you stay cool this summer.  

For a long time, SodaStream had the home seltzer market cornered. But not anymore. I recently tested nine different soda makers and was really impressed by the Aarke Carbonator III. It’s sleek—in fact, we designated it the “most stylish”—so it’s the kind of thing that you actually want to display on your kitchen counter. More importantly, it works great. Once you twist the water bottle into place, all you need to do is gently pull a lever several times to customize the carbonation anywhere from lightly fizzy to super bubbly. Bonus: Carbonating water at home means that you can stop lugging home bottles or cans from the supermarket and filling up your recycling bin with the empties. 

On those dog days of summer, I will do everything I can to avoid turning my oven. Enter: an air fryer. This countertop appliance is an internet darling because it can crisp up food without using much (or any) oil. But I think its real selling point is that it doesn’t heat up your kitchen. Most models don’t need to preheat at all and cook really quickly. You can make something as elegant as roasted salmon fillets in just 10-14 minutes, start to finish. We’ve tested more than a dozen air fryers over the years, and the Philips Digital Premium Airfryer is one of the models that originally won us over. It has a slim, compact footprint and it’s easy to set the time and temperature using its digital controls.

Sometimes you need to leave the A/C and ceiling fans behind and get outside. We’ve tested backpacking stoves and car camping stoves. While I respect those of you who want to rough it, car camping is more my speed. We love the CampChef Car Camp Stove. It’s a breeze to set up and it lights easily with an automatic igniter, and the cooking surface is spacious enough to hold two skillets at a time. You don’t actually need to love camping to use it. You can set it up in your backyard and truly enjoy dinner al fresco.

I know that ceramic baking dishes conjure up images of hot, heavy casseroles but they’re also great for chilled desserts. It’s the perfect vessel for tiramisu and one of my all-time favorite ATK recipes, Chocolate Eclair Cake. You’ll need to do a little cooking the day before, but the sweet, ice-cold payoff the next day will be worth it. Our favorite ceramic baking dish is the Mrs. Anderson’s Baking Lasagna Pan with Handle (Rose). It will serve you well all summer long—make an extra-large fruit cobbler! use it to transport grilled vegetables to the dining table!—and come winter, you can use it for the lasagna its name promises. (And if you prefer ice cream, our top-rated ice cream scoop from Zeroll is 19% off, too!)

When you’re cutting up summer tomatoes or a perfect pint of local strawberries, you don’t want to waste a single bite. A serrated paring knife is the perfect tool for cutting out their cores or slicing them neatly. Unlike straight-edge knives, which have to be supersharp to slice through squishy tomatoes and delicate fruit, serrated blades are very forgiving. Their teeth bite into the surface of the food, allowing you to easily glide through. The Wüsthof Classic 3.5-Inch Fully Serrated Paring Knife cuts through food with ease and has a comfortable handle that’s secure to grip. I promise, you’ll use this every time to quarter a cherry tomato, segment an orange, and so much more.